Free Speech and Censorship
What is Free Speech?
Freedom of expression is one of the fundamental freedoms entrenched in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This freedom has been vigorously supported by Canadian courts historically because it is essential to the pursuit of truth, participation in politics, individual self-actualization and respect for human dignity. The neuroscientist and podcaster Sam Harris perhaps said it best when he pointed out that free speech should be our “highest value” because it is “the value to improve other values”. Examining that idea further, on The Agenda with Steve Paikin, Dr. Jordan Peterson described it as such:
Freedom of speech is the freedom to engage in the processes that we use to formulate the problems in our society, to generate solutions to them and reach a consensus. It’s actually a mechanism, it’s not just another value. And you should put constraints on free speech with the most extreme caution because you interfere with people’s ability to think and communicate.
If we deny people the right to speak, and, perhaps more importantly, the right to listen and decide for themselves whether an idea is valid, we will not be able to come together as a society and determine the best path forward.
The most extensive early defense of free speech was made by the philosopher John Stuart Mill in his book On Liberty, where he discusses two major reasons to allow contentious ideas to be expressed. The first is that a censored idea might be true or partially true, and since no one is infallible, we need to hear all opinions to decide if they have some merit or to what extent they have merit. Second, Mill argues that even hearing false ideas can be beneficial, as our understanding of truth becomes more pronounced when it “collides with error”. Unless ideas are “fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed”, according to Mill, they will become “dead dogma” instead of a vibrant “living truth”.
Censorship
For these reasons Mill was justifiably concerned about censorship. Censorship is usually defined as the attempt to suppress words, images or ideas that are perceived to subvert the common good or a common goal. While most concern has been expressed when censorship is undertaken by government or state officials, Mill also tried to draw attention to what he called the “tyranny of the majority”. This is when members of a society attempt to impose conformity of thought on others, thus “enslaving the soul” of those trying to exercise independent thought and judgement.
Such robust defenses of free speech are now being rejected, and censorship is on the rise. Because of the capacity of public officials to impose binding requirements on members of society, the most concerning developments have been in the judiciary and with Human Rights Commissions. Rather than seeing freedom of expression as the highest value and foundational right that it is, it is now proposed that this must be “balanced” with other values such as equality and respect for “difference”.
While these demands for censorship in the judicial system are the most disturbing because of their connection to official sanctions, they are gaining ground because these ideas have been fueled by the the public school system. For a number of years now, certain ideas have been out of bounds in classrooms. It is maintained some ideas cannot be uttered because it is claimed that they are “violent” and a source of “trauma” for those who hear them. When it is not conversations, it is books. Many famous and important works of literature, often those that are considered to provide key insights into the human condition, have been banned from schools at various points including, but not limited to, J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. These books have all been restricted in some schools or boards because of violence, vulgarity, profanity, or other depictions that could be considered upsetting. Rather than foster intellectual growth, this censorship prevents students from being able to explore different perspectives, scrutinize their own deeply held beliefs, learn more about challenging and complicated issues that affect the world, or grow as intellectual beings.
The same thing is happening in universities. There are now clusters of policies – code of conduct, personal harassment, and human rights - that are being weaponized to stop intellectual debate and opposition to the ideologies practiced that fuel these policies in the first place. As a result, academics are afraid to oppose diversity, inclusion, and equity initiatives, and can suffer career ending consequences if they do not comply with the officially proclaimed dogma. A recent and poignant example of this is the case of Bret Weinstein, a biology professor, at Evergreen College in Washington State. Weinstein was mobbed for refusing to participate in new “day of absence,” where an “anti-racist” group at the school demanded that all white people stay off campus. After terrible international publicity and a legal battle, Weinstein and his wife, Heather, who also taught at Evergreen, were forced to resign. Throughout the West, and in Canada, they are not alone. This has terrible consequences for the development and dissemination of knowledge in our post-secondary institutions.
Support for censorship is also coming from a surprising source – journalists. While reporters in the past were a bastion of support for free speech, journalism schools now openly profess support for a very narrow ideological worldview, where students are taught to see individuals as members of groups first. It is expected that they should see the world through the lens of identity politics. Instead of seeing journalistic objectivity as being an overarching principle, reporters are encouraged to cover stories in a manner that promotes a particular version of social justice.
All of these developments are detrimental to the pursuit of truth, democracy and a meaningful existence today. For human beings to be able to be autonomous and make a positive contribution to society, we have to be able to speak openly and honestly with one another. The increasing censorship that is being facilitated by wokeism in the judiciary, journalism, and the educational system is depriving of us of the right to express ourselves and participate in the important conversations that are necessary for us to thrive in this world.
